Over the weekend, I got together with a colleague to drink nuclear-strength coffee and grouse about our writing-intensive summer plans: deadlines, uncertainty, anxiety. He mentioned the chapter “Shitty First Drafts” from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.

When I got home, I dug out my copy,which I’ve returned to multiple times over the last dozen years, and read through that chapter again. It’s short, and I recommend you read the whole book (brisk and warm, like a good mentor), but the next chapter, “Perfectionism,” is what always punches me in the face:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive believe that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.

Obviously, she’s talking specifically about writing, and I “know” (but cannot seem to learn) that perfectionism and writing are chalk and cheese. But I’ve repeatedly read that paragraph over again, and I think it’s one of those things that warrants tattooing on the underside of my eyelids, with an amendation that makes it even more useful to me (pace Ms. Lamott):

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a freely chosen life.

Of course, most women have real, material oppressors (people, lack of resources or education, health challenges, etc.) that one can’t just choose away, but for most of our readership, I would guess that perfectionism, “the voice of the oppressor”–or what I’ve elsewhere called “the Patriarch in Your Head”–does its own number on us. The pressure to be the perfect mother, student, professional, partner, example of womanity, is enough to make one insane. A lot of that pressure originates from the outside, but (in my case at least) a lot of it is something that I’ve digested and ultimately decided upon: this is how it’s done. This is only how it is done.

So, as I launch into a big project and come face to face with that voice that spits venom and assures me I’m capable of accomplishing nothing but crap, I’m going to try to remember that the voice is not “The Truth Teller” (my tendency), but The Oppressor. The Patriarch. Maybe Rush Limbaugh, or Dick Cheney, or some other loathsome old misogynist shitweasel, telling me that I will FAIL, with the sole intent of causing me to fail.

Writing is my battlefield, and it’s easy to think, sitting alone at my desk, that my academic, not-explicitly-feminist writing is not part of my feminism. Wrongo-dongo. I really believe that everything I do is part of my feminism, and learning to write, and to keep writing, and to kick in the metaphorical teeth those who want me to tremble and quail is, too.

You notice that all these guys have ROYALLY fucked up—killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians, became a drug addict while praising Rockefeller laws, cheated on his wife while impeaching Clinton—and yet they still swan around giving speaking engagements and basking in adulation like they’re the greatest men ever, and people let them!

We should all exercise our privilege to do the same. We fuck up way less and way less seriously, than they do—so we’re even more entitled.

I wanted to say something like, “you go girl!” but is that too cheesy?

Anyway, I fell in love with “Bird by Bird” and “shitty first draft, shitty first draft” has become my mantra whenever I sit down for a new project. And it’s been really liberating (and fun!) to just go with it and not worry about fucking up. Because there’s always a second draft and a third and fourth (!)

Now I can picture ol’ Rush or Dick getting zapped by electricity and writhing in pain as I scribble my way through my shitty first draft. Take that!

This makes me feel better about the grant I’m writing right now. I always think I’m a terrible writer and it is my weak point. I think that’s probably not exactly true and everyone has a weak point, right? So whatever. I’ll let my co-investigators edit the hell out of it, I just need to have something for them to edit.

Perfectionism has often sapped my ability to write. I can’t simply hammer away at something; even as I write, I’m going back and trying to improve it before I get to the next sentence. That’s where commenting has come in handy, because it forces me to think before I type, and then once I’ve written something, it’s committed to the ether, warts and all.

perfectionism HAS stopped me from living a freely chosen life. i keep waiting for my gold star at the end of, well, i don’t know when the gold stars really get handed out. but i need to start living my life for me, not for the voice of my grandfather (my own personal dick cheney) in my head.

PSoul, shed the burden of “brilliance” with me! Write something good. Or funny. Or even just vaguely interesting. Write something bad!

Newt, I too am a word-smither. Phrase by phrase, I tweak and tinker, and wear myself out making it just-so. And I hate every fucking minute of it and have a hell of a time getting to the end. I have to do the exact opposite of what you do, though: No “thinking” about it before writing; I must barf up HUGE quantities of absolute dreck: swooping, repetitive, full of divagations and loose ends, with random notes like “[add some stuff here]” or “[look up XYZ].”

So, if I want 40 decent (not brilliant, not great) pages at the end of things, I need to generate AT LEAST 75 pages of any-ol’-stuff to start with, which then get culled and elaborated on, filled in and trimmed away. It’s hideously inefficient, but it’s still not as bad as the beat-yourself-up-with-every-verb-choice way that is my old/bad habit. At the end of the day, I’m not any more satisfied, but the process isn’t as damaging to my sense of self.

The longer I live the more I see that I am never wrong about anything, and that all of the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time. ~George Bernard Shaw

and it made me realize that I am almost 30 years old, my personality, flaws and all, has pretty much solidified, and I can either spend the rest of my life trying to perfect my imperfect self and get nothing else done, or I can turn my attention outward which means giving myself a fucking pass on some things.

@BeckySharper:
I’ve started calling that the “Right to be Wrong” and it is a privilege that the patriarchs definitely reserve for themselves.

My fear of saying the wrong thing, of offending someone else, of not being perfect prevented me from commenting on some of my favorite blogs for years. I still find myself self-censoring when I want to contribute to a conversation but don’t feel I have the perfect thing to say.

Thanks for this post, PhDork, and especially for the Lamott quotes. I will have to seek out the book next time I’m at the library.

@bellacoker: The “right to be wrong.” It’s perfect and it’s so true. I would say it even goes further for some dudes like Limbaugh and Cheney: the more wrong they are the more right they seem to their adherents.

With respect to writing, I not only think I have to have a perfect first draft, but I also stubbornly seem to think I need to use some perfect process to get there. I’ve taken a lot of writing seminars, unfortunately of the legal stripe, and they’re always about efficiently outlining and organizing your ideas and information before you start. My brain just doesn’t work that way. My “notes” quickly devolve into looping trains of thought that slither and slink around the page (or more often around scraps of paper and post-its) in an order that only makes sense to me, and like you Dork, when I actually get to writing, I have to do the word vomit first. I know this about myself, and yet I always waste a colossal amount of time trying to outline and be “properly” organized before I break down and just do what comes naturally to me.

This is where being a journalist comes in handy – years of having to file soccer reports as the whistle blow has cured me of perfectionism fear. Now I simply spew words on the page in cold, clammy fear that if I don’t get them done I won’t get paid.

(That said for longer feature pieces my technique is spew them on the page for three solid hours no break then edit for as long as I humanely can until the minute I absolutely have to file and like PHDork I have random notes too although mine are usually CHECK SPELLING OF NAME AND CHECK DATE AND DON’T TRUST STUPID SOURCES LIKE WIKIPEDIA -yes, it’s true I get grumpy with myself while editing)

I’ve already found that feminism had helped me IMMENSELY with my perfectionism. Probably because my perfectionism was pretty much transferred to me by my perfectionist mother…and realizing how much patriarchy kind of forced that perfectionism on HER, and how badly it’s screwing with her now, it’s helping me to let go of those tendencies.

My new goal: don’t let the Patriarchy (and its insistence that women must be all things to all people at all times) fuck with me as badly as it’s fucked with her.

I’m glad that so many of you are finding that thought helpful. I have little cards and stickers all around my desk, with the hopes that one of them will catch my eye (and my conscience) when I’m ready to give up. I can’t remember where I read it (online somewhere), but another one, that goes along with the journalistic deadline-ethos: “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly–as long as you get it done.”

I would do so much better if I had external deadlines and the connection to money. Alas. No cash, and all “deadlines” are self-imposed. Which is to say, utterly fictional.